Athletic Challenges and Achievements by Ordinary People

Posts Tagged women on motorcycles

Rode my motorcycle home from the repair shop today and remembered this story about badass women on motorcycles…who are driving, rather than just being a showpiece on the back:

Motorcycling is primarily a male-dominated industry. Women, historically in motorcycling, have been used as more of an accessory in motorcycling. I just think with what’s going on politically, and just how progressive parts of the country are, a powerful woman is starting to become a more trendy woman. It’s starting to be cool, you know.

I don’t know if you’ve seen Maybeline’s new girl [Ruby Rose], but she’s this tatted chick, she’s very androgynous, she has short hair. She just looks like a badass. You can see [the shift] happening in popular culture. It’s really cool to see, and I think that’s totally translating to the motorcycling industry as well.

Imogen Lehtonen

And I think that the photos that we’re seeing, these kind of all women’s motorcycle events, campaigns of Harley Davidson featuring all women are just kind of proof that things are starting to shift.

Who’d have guessed that as women see themselves differently, it’s affecting where they sit on a bike? Or that they are buying more motorcycles themselves. Especially as they see other women (and photos of them) who are riding around on the front. Empowerment creates change.

The story is about women who motorcycled across the country and also took pics of other women driving bikes of their own. They followed the roads taken 100 years ago by Effie Hotchkiss and her mother, who were the first women to complete a cross-country motorcycle trip.